Delay Gratification…
Posted October 31, 2008 
Comments(0) Consumer Price Index (CPI) for January to August 2008 increased by 4.8 per cent to 110.4 compared with that of 105.3 in the same period last year. Compared with that of the same month in 2007, the CPI for August 2008 registered an increase of 8.5 per cent from 105.9 to 114.9 and when compared with the previous month, the CPI increased by 0.2 per cent.
The index for Food & Non-Alcoholic Beverages for the month of August 2008 compared to the same month in 2007 showed high percentage change of 11.7 per cent, meanwhile the index for Non-Food increased by 7.0 per cent. For the period of January to August 2008, the index for Food & Non-Alcoholic Beverages and Non-Food registered an increase of 7.5 per cent and 3.6 per cent respectively. Compared to the previous month, the index for Food & Non-Alcoholic Beverages rose by 0.8 per cent while index for Non-Food decreased to 0.1 per cent (Table 1).
CPI changes for the period January – August 2008 / 2007
The 4.8 per cent increase in the CPI was brought about by increases observed in the indices of all the main groups except those of Clothing & Footwear and Communication which decreased by 0.5 and 0.6 per cent respectively. Notable increases among main groups with high weights were Transport ( + 8.6 per cent ); Food & Non-Alcoholic Beverages ( + 7.5 per cent ) and Housing, Water, Electricity, Gas & Other Fuels ( + 1.4 per cent ). Other increases were Restaurants & Hotels ( + 6.9 per cent ); Alcoholic Beverages & Tobacco ( + 6.7 per cent ); Miscellaneous Goods & Services ( + 3.4 per cent ); Furnishings, Household Equipment & Routine Household Maintenance ( + 2.3 per cent ); Education ( + 2.2 per cent ); Recreation Services & Culture and Health ( + 2.0 per cent respectively ).
These are the data sourced out from the Malaysian Statisticic Department. What does it mean in CPI increase? well, it means that the inflation moves parallel with it, which in turn signals the inflation have gone up. It is recorded that from July 2008, Level of inflation in Malaysia have increase to 8.5% compared to 3-5% first quarter of this year. What does this mean? for me it means that;
1. My income have shrink down and my capability of buying an X number of goods have decreased, and i have become poorer.
2. I may not be able to gain the same level of satisfaction with my disposable income compared to before.
3. People are kept worrying about spending money and will shy away from most of the shopping complexes, may be window shopping would do i guest.
4. Less people spend…less sales in the retail and shopping industry (Do this happend to Malaysian)
However, even the prices of petrol have gone down today by 15 cents, still…the prices of teh tarik remains the same as before. They justified that it was not related at all to price of petrol. Heck…then before this, this people were saying that it does relate heavily with price hike…..what an inconsistent group of people.
Now, what should i do….?
1. Just save , save, save……
2. Restructure your spending behaviour
3. Try to adapt to changes,
4. DELAY GRATIFICATION, DON;T BUY THINGS THAT ONLY GIVES YOU A TEMPORARY EXCITEMENT!!!
5. Be happy!!!!!
